The end of global child labour is 'within our reach', says UN agency

Child labour around the globe is falling for the first time, and the worst and most dangerous forms of work carried out by children could be consigned to history within 10 years, according to a report from the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

But the report warned that progress is slower in Africa and in parts of the world hit by natural disasters and conflict.

Mass education programmes in developing countries, growing consumer awareness in the West of the problem of child labour and, for once, some benign effects of globalisation, led to an 11 per cent fall in the number of child workers between 2000 and 2004, the report said.

Andthe number of children aged five to 17 trapped in hazardous work dropped by more than a quarter. The ILO's director general Juan Somovia said: "The end of child labour is within our reach".

Charities have welcomed the findings but warned that child labour remains a dire problem in sub-Saharan Africa, where one child in four works, and parts of Asia including India and Pakistan. The report says that children in areas devastated by the tsunami, the earthquake in Pakistan or in conflict regions such as Afghanistan, Nepal or Sri Lanka, are at higher risk.

Meanwhile crime, trafficking and prostitution remain massive problems across the globe, including Europe.

Overall the report says that the number of working children aged five to 17 decreased by 11 per cent, from 246 million in 2000 to 218 million in 2004. The number in dangerous work fell by 26 per cent, from 171 million in 2000 to 126 million four years later for five to 17-year-olds. The decrease for younger children (aged five to 14) was higher: 33 per cent.

The ILO document argued: "The decline in hazardous work by one third among the five to 14 age group gives reason for cautious optimism - if this pace were to be maintained over the next decade, the elimination of the worst forms of child labour by 2016 would be a feasible proposition."

Personnaz Damien, spokesman for the children's agency Unicef, said: "Globally the trend is improving slowly but surely. But you still have children working 14 to 16 hours a day in factories or mines in Pakistan, India or Bangladesh."

Mr Damien said that, in the poorest countries, some form of work could be combined with schooling, as long as education did not take second place. At the heart of the global improvement has been a programme of investment in education in rapidly-developing nations. Latin America and the Caribbean have made huge strides, with the number of children in work falling by two-thirds in the past four years to just 5 per cent.

Of Brazil's child population, only 2.9 per cent were not in school by 2004. The ILO also praises China which, over the past 25 years, "has taken more people out of poverty and enrolled more children in school than any other country". But this trend has left many of the poorest nations behind and in sub-Saharan Africa, where one in four children under 14 works, an estimated 50,000 children are involved in prostitution or pornography. The document calls for a renewed effort to ensure that each child on the continent receives primary schooling.

The report says there is growing evidence that consumer awareness in the West is forcing companies to take greater care over the conditions under which products are manufactured.

Kari Tapiola, executive director of the ILO, said: "We believe that it was consumer reaction that created pressure to do something about child labour from the 1990s and I would assume that this will continue."

Nevertheless, massive problems remain and about a million children around the world are thought to be working in mines, 1.2 million involved in trafficking, and each year more than a million are forced into the sex trade.

'They feel they have to find a job because there are no opportunities'

The youngsters always seem to know where to go, once they arrive in Shenzhen railway station, or pull up in the bus in Dongguan in southern China. There are dozens of people in the area expert at running off the fake identity cards which will pronounce them older than their 14 or 15 years and secure them a job, with real pay, at one of the Pearl Delta factories powering China's economic boom. The cost of a counterfeit card is about £3.50

Other children arriving in the cities of China's eastern seaboard or Beijing don't even bother changing their ID cards. They travel with their mothers or fathers, or an uncle or an aunt, and do casual labour such as digging holes or collecting rubbish.

"Child labour is still a big problem," says Liu Kaiming, executive director of the Institute of Contemporary Observation, a non-government organisation focused on migrant workers in Shenzhen. "I reckon between 5 and 10 per cent of new workers joining the labour force are children. And because it's difficult to find workers these days, there are very many young students working in factories."

In China, a child typically finishes junior high school at the age of 14, similar to a British fourth-former on the brink of GCSEs. But there are no alternatives for many children in the countryside but to go and join the thousands of teenagers working in the cities.

One labour activist tells of meeting a group of 15-year-old boys. They had been working at the sweatshop for a year. "They loved it. They were told to go out and earn money and they feel they have to find a job as they have no opportunities once they graduate from junior high. They thought this factory was a good place, even though it was a sweatshop. They were delighted to have jobs," he said.

Clifford Coonan